"You don't have a heart," I told him. "Just a gaping hole where it should have been."
"All the more reason for you to give me yours."
I pounded my forehead against Warren 's back. "Tell me Ben's not flirting with me."
"Hey," said Ben sounding hurt. "I was talking cannibalism, not romance."
He was almost funny. If I liked him better, I'd have laughed.
Warren patted me on the top of my head and said, "It's all right, Mercy. It's just a bad dream. Once you eat your food it will all go away."
He dumped the last of the rice on one of the plates. "Adam called a few minutes ago. I told him you were sleeping and he said not to wake you up. He told me Stefan left your house about a half hour ago."
I glanced out the window and saw that it was already getting dark.
Warren saw my glance and said, "Some of the old vampires wake up early. I don't think you'll get a call before full dark."
He passed out the filled plates and handed us silverware and napkins to go with them, then shooed us back out of the kitchen to the dining room.
"So," said Ben after we'd been eating for a few minutes. "Why don't you like me, Mercy? I'm handsome, clever, witty... Not to mention I saved your life."
"Let's not mention that again," I said, shoveling spicy meat in around my words. "I might get ill."
"You hate women," Warren offered.
"I do not." Ben sounded indignant.
I swallowed, raised an eyebrow, and stared at him until he looked away. As soon as he realized what he'd done he jerked his chin back up so his eyes met mine again. But it was too late, I'd won, and we both knew it. With the wolves, things like that mattered. If I ever met him alone in a dark alley, he might still eat me-but he'd hesitate first.
I gave him a smug smile. "Anyone who's talked to you for longer than two minutes knows you hate women. I think that I can count on the fingers of one hand the times you've actually said the word 'women' and not replaced it with an epithet referring to female genitalia."
"Hey, he's not that bad," Warren said. "Sometimes he calls them cows or whores."
Ben pointed a finger at Warren - I guess his mother never taught him better manners. "There speaks someone who doesn't like..." He actually had to pause and change the word he was going to use. "... er women."
"I like women just fine," Warren told him gathering the last of his scattered rice into a pile so he could get it on his fork. " Better'n I like most men. I just don't want to sleep with them."
My cell phone rang, and I inhaled, pulling a peppercorn into my windpipe. Coughing, choking, and eyes watering, I found my phone and waved it at Warren so he could answer it while I gulped water.
"Right," he said. "We'll have her there. Does she know where it is?" He caught my eye and mouthed "seethe."
I nodded my head and felt my stomach clench. I knew where it was.
Chapter 4
We drove through open wrought-iron gates and into a brightly lit courtyard in front of the huge, hacienda-style, adobe house that served as home for the Tri-Cities' seethe. Warren pulled his battered truck behind a BMW in a circular drive that was already full of cars.
Last time I'd been here, I'd come with Stefan. He'd taken us by the back way into a smaller guest house tucked into the backyard. This time we walked right up to the front door of the main house and Warren rang the doorbell.
Ben sniffed the air nervously. "They're watching us." I smelled them, too.
"Yes." Of the three of us, Warren was visibly the least worried. He wasn't the kind of person to stew about things that hadn't happened yet.
It wasn't being watched that bothered me. What would happen if the vampires didn't believe me? If they believed that Stefan had really lost control, the way he remembered doing, they would execute him. Tonight. The vampires would not tolerate anyone who threatened the safety and secrecy of their seethe.
Not being a vampire, my word wouldn't be worth much here-they might not listen to me at all.
I'd never been certain how Stefan really felt about me. I'd been taught that vampires aren't capable of affection for anyone other than themselves. They might pretend to like you, but there would always be an ulterior motivation for their actions. But even if he wasn't my friend, I was his. If his death were my fault, because I didn't say or do something right... I just had to do everything right, had to make them listen to me.
The door opened wide, making a curious groaning noise. There was no one in the entry way.
"And cue the scary music," I said.
"They do seem to be pulling out all the stops," agreed Warren, "I wonder why they're trying so hard to intimidate you."
Ben had settled down a bit, probably because Warren was so calm. "Maybe they're scared of us."
I remembered the vampires I'd seen last time I was here and thought Ben was wrong. They hadn't been afraid of Samuel. I'd seen Stefan lift his VW Bus without a jack, and the seethe was chock-full of vampires. If they wanted to tear me apart they could, and there wouldn't be a damn thing Warren or Ben (if he felt like it) could do to stop it. They weren't afraid of us. Maybe they just liked to frighten people.
Warren must have thought the same thing because he said, "Nah, they're just playing with us."
We entered the house cautiously, Warren first, then me, and Ben took up the rear. I'd have been happier with Ben in front of me. He might be willing to take a bullet for Adam, but me, I was pretty sure, he'd have been just as happy to eat.
There was no one in the entryway, or the small sitting room it led into, so we continued down the hall. One side of the hall had three doors with arched tops, all closed, but the other side opened into a very large, airy room with a high ceiling and recessed lights. The walls were covered with brightly colored paintings, some of them spanning floor to ceiling. The walls were painted a soft yellow shade that made it feel bright and cheerful even though there were no windows.
The floor was made of dark clay tiles in a variety of reddish browns. Light, neutral-colored woven rugs were scattered about almost at random. Three couches and five comfy-looking chairs, all a rather startling shade of coral that somehow managed to blend into the rest of the southwestern feel, were set in a loose semicircle around a large wooden chair, that looked as though it ought to have been sitting in a gothic mansion, rather than surrounded by all the sunny colors of the room.
Warren had started down the hallway, but I didn't follow him. There was something about that chair...
The wood was dark, but the grain looked like oak to me. It was covered with carvings, from the lion-paw legs to the gargoyle crouched on the top of the tall back. Each of the legs had a ring of brass about a third of the way up. The arms were made entirely of brass wrought with delicate-appearing vines and small flowers and thorns. On the end of each arm, one of the thorns stuck up in a sharp point.
When I was almost close enough to touch the chair, I realized that I'd been sensing the presence of its magic even from the hallway-I just hadn't known what it was. To me, magic usually feels like a tingle, as if I am immersing my skin in sparkling water. This was a dull, bass thrum, as if someone were beating a very large drum while I plugged my ears so I could feel it, but not hear.
"Mercy?" asked Warren from the doorway. "I don't think that we're supposed to be exploring."
"Do you smell this?" asked Ben from the level of my knee. I looked down and saw that he was crouched on all fours with his head extended and slightly cocked. He closed his eyes and took in a deep breath. "There's old blood on that chair," he said.
I was going to ask him about it, but the first vampire entered. He was one I hadn't seen before. In life he'd been a medium-sized man, Irish, by the red hair. His movements were stiff and graceful at the same time, reminding me of the way a daddy longlegs moves. The vampire brushed past Warren and walked across the room without looking at any of us. He sat down on a small bench I hadn't noticed near the far wall.
The vampire's arrival seemed to answer any doubts Warren had, as he followed the vampire in and took proper bodyguard position to my right. Ben rose to his feet and stood just behind and to my left, so I was flanked by the werewolves.
Over the next few minutes the rest of the seats in the room filled up with vampires. None of them looked at us as they came in. I'd have thought it was an insult, except they didn't look at each other either.
I counted under my breath, fifteen vampires. They made an impressive showing, if only in the expense of their clothing. Silks, satins, brocades in all shades of the rainbow. One or two wore modern business suits, but most of them were in period costume, anything from medieval to the present.
Somehow I expected more dark colors, but I didn't see any black or gray. The werewolves and I were underdressed. Not that I cared.
I recognized the woman who had confiscated Samuel's cross the last time I'd been here when she came into the room. She sat in one of the coral chairs as if it had been a stool, her back upright like a Victorian lady in a tight corset, though she wore an aqua-colored silk dress with rows of beaded fringe from the nineteen twenties that seemed oddly frivolous for her stiff bearing. I looked for Lilly, the pianist, but she didn't appear.
My eyes swung past an old man with wisps of gray hair decorating his head. Unlike werewolves, vampires kept the appearance they had when they died. Even though he appeared ancient, I could be looking at the youngest vampire in the room.
I glanced at his face and realized that unlike the others in the room, he was watching me. He licked his lips and I took a step toward him before I managed to drop my gaze to the floor.
Werewolves might lock eyes for dominance purposes, but they couldn't take over your mind if you held their gaze.
Being a walker was supposed to keep that from happening, but I'd certainly felt the pull of his gaze.